I don’t think I have too many jealousies in life (okay, that might be a straight up lie–I probably have many–but I try to keep them at a minimum). But I have to say, I am extremely jealous of people who can sing. I have many other talents. For example: I can eat 3-5 hot dogs with buns in a 5 minute sitting, I can bake the best batch of peanut butter cookies you’ve ever tasted and I can argue a formal debate at the national level. But singing just wasn’t one of my God given talents.

I’ve always known this, too. It’s not like I used to really aspire to be a singer as a kid or something. I always knew I had an awful singing voice. Ever since the day I self-recorded myself on my little purple tape player when I was about 8 years old. I remember playing it back and thinking, “Oh dear. Who the hell is that? Certainly that’s not my golden voice. It definitely doesn’t match the one that I hear in my naive little head…”

Well, from that day on, I adopted the habit of lip syncing in church and in the car. But in 5th grade, Mrs. LaPort forced me into the school choir. At my school, the entire fifth grade class was the school choir–all except for myself and Nick (the boy who sat in the back of the class and played with rubber bands and glue for 7 hours a day). Quite frankly, I would have just assumed sit in the classroom with Nick and have special “creative time.”

I remember Mrs. LaPort saying, “Misty, you need to be in choir. I’ve signed you up. Now, I am going to play the piano and I want you to sing. I need to find out whether you are an Alto or a Soprano.” I had no clue what these Chineese words and I was embarrassed as all hell that this woman was going to make me sing in front of her–out loud!

Well, as I said, I did become a member of the 5th grade choir. I was classified as a Soprano. At the end of the 5th grade year, I was not encouraged to continue on with my singing career by my music teacher. But that’s okay. I went on to conquer bigger, better, less nerdy things like Debate.

I still listen to those people who have voices unlike mine–and I wish mine were more like theirs. But then I think to myself, “Could they argue both the Affirmative and the Negative of any resolution presented to them in the span of an 8 minute time frame, dig out necessary disadvantages, offer a counterplan, keep an organized flow and back a frazzled partner–and maintain a hair-do that looks anywhere near this good? ” Probably not. I guess we all have our niche.

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The Raspberry Dinosaur Blog · This blog is neither informative nor is it educational. It is hardly entertaining and I think it only slightly qualifies as an actual ‘blog.’ But it is mine, nonetheless. So, here it is.